IT fair

I recently attended an IT fair for Milwaukee area highschool students. It was hosted at Harley Davidson which was a very neat location, if you have never been there I highly recommend checking it out. I didn't know what to expect going into this event, but it was very cool for a tech geek like me. The first thing I saw when walking into the convention hall was people demoing an Oculus Rift this was very exciting to me, I love trying out new technology so I gladly waited in the short line.

I was impressed with the rift, I had only been there for fifteen minutes and it was easily already worth the trip. Next the superintendent of MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) gave a small speech talking about all the great jobs in the IT field and how the country desperately needs more IT professionals. The crowd of high-school students seemed genuinely interested which I found refreshing compared to how MPS students get portrayed in local media. After she was done with her spiel I made my rounds to the different schools and businesses that had tables set up. All in all it was a fairly impressive plethora of educators and IT professionals. I made a point to chat with the MATC table being a current student enrolled in their IT program. I got some cool swag from a few tables, the basic things you would expect if you have ever been to a similar event. I have to say out of everything there the robotics table was the biggest draw for me. Not only was it an impressive setup with real functioning robots and labtops set up showing videos from the schools most recent robot competition

But the student manning the table had a real passion for robotics. It was nice to see his eyes light up when talking about the robotics club. I failed to catch his name but I have no doubt he will be very successful in a future IT career. After checking out the robotics table there wasn't much left for me, I stoped by the UWM table but honestly they didn't have much more then some paperwork to show. All in all it was a very cool and unique experience I'm glad I was able to attend.

That is pretty much it for my coverage of this event. Check back soon to see what the inspector has up his sleeves for the next blog post. Untill then stay curious, life is truly fasinating and I dont need an Oculus Rift to see that.

Cyber Scouts and Raspberry PI

I have been involved in a small cyber scout troop for the past year. The aim of this blog post is to explain just what exactly cyber scouts is, and to show a few of the projects we have been working on. Cyber Scouts is a grass roots organization riding the makers popularity wave. Its basically a computer club for kids to teach them about technology today. I am involved with a small troop based out of Franklin. Its a mainly family group consisting of my father, a couple cousins, my nephew a few of their friends and myself.

The inaugural meeting started with everyone receiving a Raspberry PI which if your not familiar is "The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a capable little device that enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games." ~www.raspberrypi.org.

Over the past year we have done alot with the PI teaching the kids and sometimes myself different aspects of computing. Not all meetings were incredibly tech heavy however, one of my favorite meetings was when we busted out the leggos and had some of our scouts make cases for their PI's

Another project we brought to fruition was creating a minecraft server for the kids to play with each other on. For this we used Digital Ocean which I highly recommend to anyone looking to build a low cost cloud server. Another project we worked on was creating tech fashion, in this case wiring up a hat with programmable  LED lights with literally thousands of different color and pulse choices.

I hope now that you have seen a little of what we've done in the last year you might be inspired to create your own chapter, or event just buy a PI they are only $35 and the possibilities are endless with these wonderful little machines. As we continue to do more projects in the future I plan to blog about them, untill then I'm the Inspector and I'm signing off.